My friend Leslie, noting my recent postings about my consent workshops and the issue of men’s role in sexual assault prevention, sent me a transcript of a recent Dan Savage podcast. Dan, one of America’s best known and respected sexual advice columnists, authors, and speakers, took a call from a guy whose most recent love interest had broken up with him after she had been sexually assaulted by another man.
Caller:
I’ve been trying really hard to be supportive of her even though honestly I don’t really know how to be. She sort of shut down emotionally, socially, as I guess, is kind of expected. But she’s lost trust and comfort in hanging out with guys of any sort, which includes me, and maybe especially me, considering our history includes taking things a bit far, or further than what was really comfortable for her, for either of us. Anyway, like I said, I’ve been trying to be supportive and helpful, but she recently told me to kind of back off as far as that was concerned because she doesn’t really feel comfortable talking about what’s going on with any guy. So my problem is that I’m still really interested in this girl, but I don’t know what my next move should be or how I can show this girl that I’m supportive of her without crossing any comfort lines, or basically how I should handle this kind of touchy situation.
Dan, bless his heart, reads the caller the riot act, calling him out for the bit about a past history of “taking things further than what was really comfortable for her.” Savage also makes two points that I think are hugely important, and are sufficiently universal as to be applicable to a great many men in situations not dissimilar from the caller.
First of all, Savage points out that many men find themselves interested in women who are survivors of sexual assault. He commends the caller, and other men like him, for the desire to help their current or prospective partner heal. But he also points out that trying to help a woman heal from what happened while also trying to get her into bed is at best working at cross-purposes and at worst indefensibly predatory. And though he doesn’t name it as such, Savage also touches on the “knight in shining armor” fantasy with which so many well-meaning men who are partnered with sexual assault survivors struggle. It’s incredibly easy for the line to be blurred between a compassionate desire to assist in another person’s healing and the narcissistic desire not just for sex, but to be the hero, the one who gives a traumatized woman a chance to “believe in men” again.
We say it over and over again in men’s work, particularly when the topic of male feminism comes up: “you don’t get a cookie.” What we mean is that despite the relative rarity of sincere, pro-feminist men, those guys who are “walking the walk” as well as “talking the talk” don’t deserve a special reward merely for doing what women have a right to expect. Past a certain age, we don’t get applause for using the toilet rather than wetting our pants; we shouldn’t expect “applause” or a “cookie” merely for treating women as human beings. Playing the ‘rescuer” flatters our ego, allows us to posit ourselves as “good guys” in opposition to the “bad men” who hurt and mistreat women. But if we imagine, as Dan’s caller imagines, that there’s some way to pursue our own sexual agenda while simultaneously helping a rape victim to heal, we’re engaging in some pretty ugly hubris. Bottom line: if the caller wants to support the woman in his life, he can’t do that effectively or decently while also trying to get her into bed.
Savage also notes that men — the sort often called Nice Guys(tm) — frequently become enraged when what they see as their efforts to play the hero aren’t sufficiently appreciated by the women whom they are trying so chivalrously to rescue. Men’s rights groups and Seduction Community workshops are filled with fellows still struggling to cope with their own rage at having what they thought were their well-meaning attempts at people-pleasing spurned. Hang around these guys, and you’ll hear the same tired thing over and over and over again: “I tried for years to be a good guy, polite and respectful. And you know what? I got shit on and manipulated. Fuck that, I’m not taking it any more. From now on, it’s all about me.” The rage is real, and the hurt that undergirds it real, but the target of the anger is the wrong one. Not only are these lads very rarely as altruistic as they imagine themselves to have been (white knights tend to expect wide-eyed gratitude and perpetual sexual availability from their formerly distressed damsels), they fail to see how so much of the behavior that they decry in women is in fact a rational response to men’s abuse. Savage:
God it sucks doesn’t it- sexual assault? Doesn’t it suck the way some men ruin women- for other men too? Doesn’t it suck the way women are abused sexually in our culture and the way they’re treated, and the damage it does and it flows out in big ripples. Or maybe it’s not big ripples; maybe what these are are aftershocks. Sexual assault is the earthquake, there are aftershocks, more people get hurt in the aftershocks. And you may be a victim of this sexual assault too. And it would be great if more men realized that male sexual violence directed at women doesn’t just impact women, it impacts ultimately men too. And the good guys do realize that and the good guys try to do something about it.
From a feminist standpoint, there’s a lot that’s problematic about what Dan says. Positioning the caller as a “victim too” comes dangerously close to a false equivalence; hell, it is a false equivalence. Men’s pain at being judged “guilty until proven innocent” is hardly comparable to being raped, and it’s unacceptable to even hint that it is. But at the same time, Dan’s right: rape and assault and harassment hurt everyone, tearing the fabric of our society and alienating us from each other. Not all men are rapists, but all men pay a price for rape.
It’s not enough for “good guys” to plead to the women in their lives “but I’m not like other men”. That line carries no weight; what matters is redirecting that anger away from women and towards an entire culture that doesn’t take women’s bodily integrity seriously. Millions and millions of women and girls are sexually assaulted in this county, and it’s not as if 300 ambitious predators are solely responsible. It takes millions and millions of men — friends, brothers, husbands, teachers, sons, co-workers, teammates — to commit those rapes. And it will take men holding other men accountable, publicly and courageously and unequivocally, to change our culture. If a genuine desire to end women’s suffering isn’t enough, then perhaps Savage is right: appealing to men’s own self-interest, as mercenary as it may seem, may be a vital tactic in transforming a society that as yet does not fully understand the devastation that sexual violence wreaks in all of our lives.
But we can do better than that because we are better than that. Dan gets two cheers, but not three.
Calling raped women “ruined” is one holy hell of a lot worse than problematic. How…traditionally phrased of Dan.
The worst part is that, as you indicate, being squarely against rape is so far from standard that I still feel the dirty impulse to praise him for this garbage. It’s like the way women were falling all over themselves to worship Kevin Smith and Bill Maher last week, just because they were anti-Polanski. Sure, they’re still self-satisfied and outspoken sexists, but just once, they said rape was wrong! It felt like a big deal, it really did.
I’ve been involved with two women who were survivors of some sort of rape or sexual assault. In my experience, it puts the premium all the more squarely on the sort of patience and waiting for invitation that anyone ought to observe in their relationships. It’s a dangerous temptation, in this area but not only in this area, to assume that you can “fix” anyone. Even if you could be the “knight in shining armor”, that’s a pretty high horse to ride on and to stay on. No one should actually want to set themselves on that kind of pedestal. People need to do their own work, in their own time and way. If and when someone is far enough along with whatever their path may be that a mutually satisfying sexual relationship becomes possible, then there’s something to talk about.
I didn’t see a link to the transcript, so I’m not sure what exactly Dan Savage said in context, but “do something about it” doesn’t strike me as an entreaty to plead.
I agree with and applaud your overall point that men should direct their emotions to holding other men accountable for sexual transgressions. I think your articulation of a “full man” is needed, but I feel at times you do not give enough attention to the real, felt emotions of men that would be legitimately pointed towards women.
The men in the groups discussing their emotions, as you state, felt shat on and manipulated. Certainly one can trace the story back to an initial transgression by a man, but does that excuse the actions of the women that shat on the men and manipulated them? Is it not possible to hold both the men that assaulted the women and the women that manipulated and shat on their next partners accountable? Is not a wrong action a wrong action? I feel that this position, while difficult when emotions want to create a black/white world, would be more inclusive of men’s emotions while allowing them to work to help women. In this way, it bridges instead of entrenches.
I’m reminded of the purely selfish argument against slut-shaming, which I heard and may have, at some point actually made myself, with the caveat that it’s profoundly grotesque if this is your only reason for not being a jerk. In short, slut-shaming discourages women from having more sex. If all the men shame the women, all the men will, in short order, be having far less sex than they would have otherwise.
It’s a reasonable argument which, incidentally, doesn’t require the listener to consider women as human beings, or as anything more than vending machines for sex. Dan Savage’s argument is similar, in that it appeals to men on a purely selfish level. I suppose that a moderately creepy argument that will be listened to is more practical than a good one that won’t.
Edgar, the point is that men often interpret as “shitting on” and “manipulation” a woman’s simple exertion of her own boundaries. A “Nice Guy” who does something like helping a female friend move will feel “manipulated” or “used” when she does not respond by falling in love with him. Or the “Nice Guy” will feel “shat on” when a female friend accepts his overtures to hang out, or spend time together as friends, but then does not accept his sexual overtures. There is an assumption that any woman should respond with love and sexual access simply because she is treated decently, and very little understanding that women are real people with their own preferences and desires, and that, just as men do not fall in love with every woman who hands them a cup of coffee, a woman will not necessarily fall in love with every man she is friends with. This expectation is, itself, an outgrowth of rape culture. Therefore, men feel justified in responding with anger to all women if one woman rejects them sexually, and in using manipulative techniques (PUA) to get the sex that they are “owed” simply by virtue of being male.
Yes, individual women can be jerks to men, but that is not what we are talking about here. We are talking about larger societal trends, and how those impact the relations between individual men and women.
Dan Savage’s argument is similar, in that it appeals to men on a purely selfish level. I suppose that a moderately creepy argument that will be listened to is more practical than a good one that won’t.
But the prospect that the argument will be listened to is exactly what’s creepy. It is an argument for woman-as-vending-machine–telling men to keep their machines in good working order just isn’t a bad means to a good end, it’s a bad end.
It’s like Kevin Smith’s recent Twitter exhortations for men to care about breast cancer research, because tits that have been surgically removed are tits you can’t jizz on.
There is no way to make this garbage ‘pragmatically’ effective. It’s just giving misogyny a self-rightous suit of armor to wear (’how can you object to treating women as garbage? We don’t want our garbage to get raped or get cancer!’ No.)
Not following, Edgar. If your last girlfriend was a manipulative asshole, it’s OK to be a dick to all women thereafter, either as a form of revenge or on the assumption that her manipulative assholery was inextricably wired into her XX chromosomes and therefore all women will be just like that?
I guess I count myself as skeptical regarding the entire “standing athwart the tide” or “changing the culture” imperative as being that efficacious. Always sounds to me like “the culture” is some sort of operating system we can just download the new upgrade for or something, rather than being organic, unpredictable, and very often unspoken and embedded.
Maybe my focus is just different, more individualized. I count people’s integrity and ethics highly in how I judge them, so giving any sort of approval or even tacit acceptance to someone who would engage in sexual assault would be quite out of bounds. That’s my own personal choice, though, about who I want to be and associate with, and I make the decision about what the value of that is. That ought to be its own reward. Maybe that argument doesn’t “sell” these days.
The same works the other way for “Nice Guys” or “Knights in Shining Armor” or whatever guys doing that sort of thing are doing. People, men, ought to know themselves and decide their own value, not condition it on what women think of them or what sort of treatment they get from individual women. Attempting at a relationship should be plus-plus for everyone concerned, not an effort to cover some sort of character gap or insecurity.
Dan Savage enrages and arouses and educates, and I’m glad you clarified this post of his.